


A Lady, Proper

by Themadwomanwhoisunfortunatelylackingabox



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Breeding, First Time, Genderqueer James Fitzjames (1813-c.1848), Insecurity, James Fitzjames gender crisis, James Fitzjames is a virgin, Light Dom/sub, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Praise Kink, Procrastinating on my Victorian Studies Paper by writing sad victorians have sex, Top Crozier, Virginity Kink, gender euphoria, literally just 4k of James Fitzjames dreaming about being Francis's wife, slight - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:20:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27688847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Themadwomanwhoisunfortunatelylackingabox/pseuds/Themadwomanwhoisunfortunatelylackingabox
Summary: “Oh, my darling,” Crozier says, and though James can scarcely believe it, he can hear the lust in his voice as well. “I’ve had you pegged all wrong, haven’t I?” He says, and James’s breath is growing even quicker now, faster and faster, because he cannot stand this, but he cannot bear it to stop. “You’re not a good little lad, are you,” he says, “You’re a goodgirl.”PWP.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 8
Kudos: 88





	A Lady, Proper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kyele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyele/gifts).



> For my darling Kyele, Happy Birthday <3

"On your knees, then," Crozier says, low and raspy, and it sounds like something from a wicked dream come to life. 

James's knees buckle nigh-immediately, as if he was enchanted, as if Francis were some goddamned fairy king from under a hill somewhere, an James was hopeless in his grasp. This cannot be real, he is certain. His breath hitches, and he feels so fevered with wanting he cannot stand it. This cannot be real, he is certain, though the days grow so similar in this damned arctic he cannot tell what is real and what isn't anymore. 

"Well?" Crozier says, low again—his voice is always so low, and it drives James half mad with it, god almighty—low and _expectant_. 

An inhuman keen comes out of him, and James is on the ground before he can make heads or tails of anything but his need. He can feel himself throbbing in his trousers, worsened only by the sensation of Crozier's gaze upon him, seeing him so totally, knowing him so totally. 

He feels as though he has fallen mad, but he cannot bring himself to care.

"That's it, darling," Crozier says, so steady and unaffected, and his hand entangles itself in James's hair. "That's it."

He leans his head against Francis's knee and gasps as though he has ran all the way back to London. His heart races. His limbs feel exhausted. And through all of this, Francis's hand in his hair, playing through it absentmindedly, so warm and strong and steady. 

"That's it,” he says again, so soft James could cry with it. "How good you are. Look at how good you are for me," he says, and the hand running through his hair is now running down his face, pausing only for Francis to run his thumb against the seam of his lips. "So pretty."

_Pretty_. The word makes him gasp and grow all the more desperate, but Francis's hand keeps him in place. He turns his face into Francis's knee because he can't stand the weight of his gaze, looking at him as though he were but a porcelain doll, an object meant for nothing but to please him, to please him and —he shudders in something close to delight but edged with something sharper—and to be _pretty_. 

"You like that, don't you, my darling," Crozier says, "being good."

He nods immediately, wildly, shamefully, not moving his head, not daring to look Francis's way. 

"Use your words," he says, "be a good boy.”

Heat flushes in his cheeks but that does not stop him, cannot stop him. He is burning already, in far more damning places, and he wants so badly it hurts. “Yes,” he says, haltingly. “I do,” he says, “I like being good for you.” Then. As if a damn had burst sheerly by opening his mouth, he begins to babble. “Please—oh, God, please, F—Crozier,” he says, because even now he cannot presume upon Francis’s given name, no matter how often he thinks it in private; no matter how often, in secret, his lips had formed the sounds. Francis. _Francis_. Every time he says it, it feels as though he is begging for something he knows not. But oh, how he wants.

“Please what, “ Crozier says. “What do you want,James.”

He moans low and loud, but it feels more like a sob than a moan; his face is pressed into Francis’s thigh, now, so hard he can practically taste the wool of his trousers, and he wants so hard he can barely breathe. “Please,” he chokes, “Oh, god—“

“What do you want,” he says again, stroking his hair, predatory, possessive. “My cock?”

James has been in the navy almost his entire life, but the vulgarity hits him in a way which is almost like lightning; He shivers all the way down to his toes. He becomes aware, perhaps of how close he is to the organ in question, of how much he wants it, in ways he cannot even comprehend, let alone put to words. That, however, is what Francis is here for. Francis knows it all, of course. All of those sordid secrets James could only ever half-dream about while the other boys crept into each other’s bunks, Francis would know. Does know. And now, perhaps, perhaps, he’ll show James, like a kind schoolmaster. “Please,” he chokes out again, and prays that somewhere in the ephemera Francis will know what he means.

“You can’t even say it?” Crozier says, and he sounds almost disappointed, but when James hazards a glance up at him, his eyes are still dark with desire. “How proper you are, James. Like a good little lady.”

He has to stifle a keen at that as well; but that shameful, locked away part of him, feels as though it is bursting at the gates begging for more, just a single taste. “Again,” he says, before he can stop himself. “Call me—again.”

“What,” he says, “a lady?”

James cannot properly stifle the keen this go round. “ _Please_ ,” he says. It is begging. He cannot help it.

“Oh, my darling,” Crozier says, and though James can scarcely believe it, he can hear the lust in his voice as well. “I’ve had you pegged all wrong, haven’t I?” He says, and James’s breath is growing even quicker now, faster and faster, because he cannot stand this, but he cannot bear it to stop. “You’re not a good little lad, are you,” he says, “You’re a good _girl_.”

His head shakes as he presses it into Francis’s leg. He is not sure if it is from sobbing, or some strange and manic form of laughter. His whole body is shaking. Perhaps the whole world is shaking. He cannot possibly swallow enough oxygen to live, but his body attempts to anyway. His mind runs and twists too quickly for him to control, and he finds himself imagining his most lurid of fantasies, the kind that he never dared let himself even think, lest in fever dreams. He imagines himself—

He imagines himself as the sort of Lady Francis would court, the kind who would enchant him. He imagines himself—damn him, but oh, he does—in the place of Sophia Cracroft, loved, admired, and treated more delicately than anything Francis had ever handled before in his life. If he were her, with her gem-colored skirts and silken hair, and Francis Francis _Francis_ —not only allowed to call him so, but _asked—_ he would never have rejected his proposal three times. He’d never have rejected it even once. He’d never, even, have been capable of playing coy, too eager by far for society’s standards. Their courtship would’ve been a whirlwind, married by the next time Francis went off to sea. He’d need to go back to sea in order to take care of them of Course, in order—in order to provide for James, of course, and keep him in the kind of pretty dresses Francis—Francis liked to see him in—

The fantasy grows too strong for a moment, and he can hardly bear it, not with the real Crozier staring down upon him, the evidence of his own arousal scant mere inches away from James’s face. Yet he holds back, gasps back air, tightens his hands into fists which he then releases. He cannot waste this moment.He doesn’t know if he will ever have this chance again. Crozier’s hand rests on the back of his neck, steadying and gentling. He wonders if Francis would do the same for Mrs. Crozier, but then pushes the thought away. Francis would never do anything so crass as telling her to get on her knees. Unless—

Unless, of course, he could tell how much James wanted it. How much he was gagging for it. How much James wanted to be held, yes, but also to kneel. To be told what to do. So maybe Francis would, then, if only because he knew he was pleasing his sweet little wife just as much as he was pleasing himself. 

“So tell me, then, my girl, what do you want?” Crozier says, patient with him in ways he never is on deck, his voice almost affectionate, almost—James cannon bear it. Cannot bear Francis calling him his girl, like some real sweetheart he left on land; called so kindly and so gently.

“Please,” he says, because he cannot say anything else, and the shameful desire burns him alive. He wants to be the other version of himself so badly, wants to be _Mrs. Crozier_ so badly it aches. “ _Please_ , I want—“ To be kissed. To be made love to like a man does to his lady wife, to be fucked like a whore in an alleyway, anything, anything, so long as Francis is giving it to him. 

Francis moves his fingers to James’s mouth, and presses two fingers to the seam of his lips. James takes them into his mouth without hesitation, sucking on them as he has thought about so often, as he has thought about doing to other things so often. Francis tastes clean, and faintly of soap.His fingers are thick, though,especially in comparison to James’s; so strong and so capable, and making James’s jaw ache in a way which would have him moaning around them before too long. This, of course, just makes him suck on them harder, wanting, suddenly, for Francis to see him in such a state. Wanton. Aching. Completely in his thrall. Ready to choke on anything Francis chooses to give him, and thank Francis for the privilege of it all.

“My God,” Crozier says, and from his mouth, like this, it feels simultaneously like the most blasphemous swear James has ever heard and yet also the most tender of prayers. “You’re a sight, aren’t you?”

He can feel himself blushing even as he begs, all pride abandoned, pressing kisses against Francis’s fingertips. “Please,” he begs again.

“Alright, my darling,” Crozier says, voice hoarse, “who am I to deny you?”

James could laugh at that, maybe, in another time. Crozier, who loathed him for over half their voyage, Crozier, who would’ve denied James even a kind word just a scant year ago—but he dares not do so now. To draw attention to it, he is certain, would end whatever beautiful, impossible dream he has fallen into. One does not question miracles, even when they are as mundane as this.

Francis unlaces his breeches, and James feels himself flush, drawn back again to the guilty fantasy which had so entranced him earlier. If he were Mrs. Crozier, perhaps a few months after her marriage, would she blush at the thought of this action? From embarrassment of the act, or more likely—embarrassment at her desire for it, for her need to be on her knees before Francis, as though at prayer, though for far, far less innocent reasons. 

When he finally gets his mouth around Francis, it does not necessarily feel like prayer. But Francis swears and tangles his fingers, harder, in James’s hair, and James does, in a way, feel like a dutiful acolyte. 

Francis tastes like salt, like the sea. Brackish waters and musk. James had joked, once, that the sea was the only sweetheart he’d ever take, and the thought jumps back unprompted. 

He has never done such thing like this before, but he tries his best at it anyways. He wants to please Francis so badly it burns, so badly his knees have begun to tremble from their place on the floor. Something nervous and flighty has taken a hold in his chest, a hummingbird, perhaps, and it flaps its anxious little wings with every fevered beat of his heart. He is so desperate to please he cannot breathe with it. He wonders, perhaps, if this is how ladies feel on their wedding night, and the thought is so heady he nearly drowns in it. Francis’s hips stutter forwards, and James tries his damndest not to choke, to pull the weight of him deeper into his mouth, to make Francis lose control again. 

“James,” Crozier gasps again, as though James were something that was precious, something holy, and not the other way around. “Oh, god.” His fingers tighten in James hair again. It hurts—perhaps, as he realizes later, more than it really should—but the hurt is steadying, grounding, a good sort of hurt. Good. He wants to ache for days afterward, for every moment he spends brushing out his curls to also be spent remembering this. 

He pulls away, and James attempts to chase after him, but he is held back by that same hand in his hair.

“Not yet,” Francis says, and his voice sounds as though he had just been on the cusp, “the night is still young, isn’t it, my darling?” He runs his hand through James’s hair, and gestures towards his berth. 

James’s breath catches. He hadn’t thought, he had barely ever dreamed—even this much is so good, so much more than could be expected. To be of use was enough. To be on his knees was enough. This? This is too good for a dream, too sinful to be heaven. 

“I’m hardly going to take my lady on the floor, now am I?” Francis says, almost gentle. Almost unbearably gentle, for him, and James shudders with it. “Do you think I’m that uncivil, James?” 

This would be how Francis would talk to his bride, James thinks, half mad. He follows Francis to his berth and wonders, perhaps, if he’d simply gone mad from the moment he’d stepped into Francis’s quarters, if this was all just some strange hallucination. If it was, he never wanted to see reality again. Let him die mad. For tonight, tonight, he is Francis’s bride. Mrs. Crozier. Miss Fitzjames. 

He sits upon the bed, and Francis kisses him. This, neither, had he ever had before. It’s strange, perhaps, that far more profane parts of Francis’s anatomy had touched his lips before his mouth ever did, but James doesn’t mind. For a kiss like this—there’s nothing that he wouldn’t have done for it. Nothing at all. 

He is so tender, Francis. More tender than James has ever had any right to believe he could be. Perhaps—perhaps tender in a way which he only is with women. Perhaps—tender in a way which he only is with women he loves.

“James,” Francis gasps. “Darling.”

He wishes he were in a dress right now, the one from Carnivale, the one with its satin skirt and velvet bodice. He wishes he could simply ruck up a petticoat and then Francis could touch him, skin-to-skin. As it is, however, there is a fumbling with both of their breeches, an unceremonious shucking of cloth. And there is Francis, kissing him through all of it. Gentle but warm. James wants nothing more than to live in those kisses forever; to breathe out Francis’s name with every gasp for air, though of course he knows better than to dare. He cannot risk anything which would turn Francis’s mood, cannot risk being pushed aside and unceremoniously turned out of the room. This is the only chance he’ll ever have. He cannot waste the entire fantasy on one simple indulgence.  
Instead, James’s bridegroom leans on top of him, too much and not enough all at once. “I—I have never,” he says, between kisses, not meetings Francis’s eyes. They are clad in naught but their shirts, now, and James’s slips down over one shoulder as it is. 

Francis stills. “Never?” He says.

“Never,” James repeats, and he wonders, suddenly, if that is more of a reason for shame than it is a badge of honor; if he ought to have stayed silent. 

Yet after a moment’s respite, Francis reaches towards him again, somehow impossibly gentler. “No one?”

“Just you,” he says. “Only ever you.”

Francis swears. His touch, now, is feather light upon James, trailing down his chest like a mere phantom of a touch. “I will be gentle,” he says, as if trying to reassure James as well as himself. “So gentle for you, I promise.” He seals the vow with a kiss upon James’s neck. It makes James shiver, how soft his touch is, how impossibly sweet his words are.Francis fumbles somewhere in a drawer, and comes back with a vial of oil. His hands tremble sightly as he opens it, though whether that’s out of haste, desire, or simply a remnant of his need for drink, is beyond James. 

When Francis’s hands find him again, he has to hold back a blush and a gasps they trail back behind his sex and toys with his entrance. He barely presses in more than a single knuckle, at first, slow and maddening and meticulous. His other hand unlaces James’s shirt, and kisses each inch he reveals, and James wants so much he could die from wanting alone. “Please,” he begs. 

But Francis just silences him with another kiss and continues on with his maddeningly slow pace. 

James had expected some kind of pain to come from this, some kind of twinge or burn. All ladies hurt their first time, he knows. Sometimes they even bleed. He would’ve welcomed the pain if it had meant this, would’ve accepted anything, if he had Francis, but Francis’s hands move so slowly and they’re so slick that there is nothing but pleasure. If James weren’t already mad, which, oh, he must be—then he certainly will be mad by the end of the evening. He wants Francis in him already, he wants them married, he wants Francis to come inside him, he wants for the seed to take and for him to grow round with Francis’s child, to be Francis little wife, at home taking care of the children, anything, anything, _everything_.

He isn’t even sure when Francis fingers had turned from one, to two, to three; when it had gone from nothing to fullness, but when Francis pulls them out he practically weeps from the sensation. 

When Francis enters him in actuality, it’s everything he could desire and more. It’s hot and warm and so, so slow James wants to weep again; he drags his fingernails down Francis’s back instead. With every thrust he hits a place that makes James see white, and he kisses him, —god, he kisses him—and whispers sweet nothings into his ear. 

It’s all James can do to simply wrap his arms around Francis’s shoulders and take it as it’s given to him. It’s too much, it’s not enough, and Francis is on top of him, strong and handsome and capable. He wants this moment to last forever. He wants to the rest of his life to be like this, with Francis dismantling him slowly, calling James his beautiful girl.Or at least, he wants to die in this moment, before the cold or the tins or the scurvy does them all in. He wants this dream to be real, to wake up tomorrow morning as Francis Crozier’s new little wife, home in England, her husband asleep beside her. Mrs. Crozier does not have to worry about getting the men home safe,about what Sir John would’ve wanted, about living to survive through this damned Arctic and the march they have ahead of them. No, Mrs. Crozier only has to worry about her watercolors, the garden, the children. 

They really would have such beautiful children, if James was a Lady proper. Little girls with Francis’s ginger hair that James would curl as lovingly as he does his own. Little boys with James’s eyes and Francis’s stubbornness and steady heart. Mrs. Crozier would look after them with all of the love and care of an angel, each one her little _raison d’être._ And Francis—Francis would be such a good father. He’d fight away all the monsters under the bed and distract from every nightmare. He’d return from his travels with tales of adventure for their boys and fine china dolls for their girls and bolts of silk for James. And once it was time for the children to go to bed, he’d show James just how much he’d missed him, until James was crying out in their bed and there was a new little one upon the way. Mrs. Crozier’s most favorite and important of responsibilities would always be keeping her husband happy. 

If only James had any real experience in that. If only half of his and Francis’s conversations weren’t some form of argument, if only Francis didn’t despise him, if only this night wasn’t simply a mixture of pity and mutual release, if only he could actually have this forever. 

“James, James, darling,” Francis pants in the crook of his neck, before kissing the spot and suckling a mark into it. Good. James wants there to be evidence, even if it will be hidden forever by the collar on his uniform. He wants to be able to look back and recall that this isn’t a fever dream, that once Francis Crozier held him, and once, James was called beautiful by him. 

He will remember this night on the march, and he will remember it in the cold, and he will remember it the next time Crozier looks at him like all of his ideas are naive and useless. He will remember Francis kissing him, again and again, on every bare inch of skin he can find. He will remember the way his voice rasped when he said James’s name, the way he pressed James into the mattress and kept him there as his hips stuttered in and out with the most delicious friction…The waves of pleasure which build and build and build until James is grasping at Francis’s shoulders desperately, crying and begging in tandem with each thrust of Francis’s hips…

It is everything, everything, and all too soon it is over. Francis’s hand wraps around James and the sensation is far too much too handle; his climax is quick and intense and he can hardly breathe it is too much. “Francis,” he says, despite of himself, “Francis, Francis, god, _Francis_ —”

“That’s it, darling, yes—” Francis says into his ear, and it’s too intimate, too much, god— “That’s it, my beautiful girl—” his breath is coming quicker now and his thrusts too, and James comes with hands fisting in Francis’s hair. Francis comes a mere moment after. _“God,”_ Francis swears, “ _James_.”

The aftermath is soft and quiet. Francis rolls off of him with nothing but heavy breathing. James waits, quietly, for this to end as he was expecting. Any moment now, Francis will come out of the post-coital stupor, and pull away to redress. James will follow suit as soon as Francis does, so that he might avoid any awkward moment where Francis orders him out of his quarters. He waits a moment, and then a moment longer. Francis does not move away.Perhaps he is waiting for James to move first, so as not to appear too cold. It is unlike Francis to worry about such a thing, and yet, it must be so. Very well. James will move, perhaps, in another moment. When he can bring himself to move. He will, truly. But the bed is so warm, and it aches down to his bones to know that this is his last moment in this experience. To know that tomorrow, things will once again be as they were. He will be Francis’s second command, and Francis will not send a single glance his way unless it would be in relation to his duties. That will be all, and he must accept it. So he will move. He will. 

He does not move. 

Neither does Francis. Instead, Francis’s hand plays absentmindedly in his hair, ever so gentle and sweet. James does not breathe for fear that it may end, for fear that Francis will come to his senses and turn him out. He doesn’t. Somehow, for some unknowable reason, he doesn’t. His hand in James’s hair is soft and slow and calming. James wants to cry from it. He doesn’t dare. 

He remembers, suddenly, that he called Crozier Francis earlier, and Crozier still had not turned him aside. He had still called him beautiful. He had still called him his girl. He waits, silently, as Francis’s breathing slows and evens aside him, and slowly, slowly, he lets himself sleep as well.

When he dreams, it is of another life. 

**Author's Note:**

> My brain: consider this.... procrastinate on your Victorian Studies paper by writing 4k of sad Victorians fucking  
> me: oh my god that's perfect


End file.
